Brynn Anderson/AP Photo
Mike Bloomberg in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami on Tuesday
After a year-plus of campaigning, countless ads and T-shirts and yard signs, and a couple dozen candidates for president, we’re now left with the same two high–name ID figures that led national polls the day after the midterm elections, each in control of their own wing of the party. But this election season could have landed in a very different place. It could have heralded the end of democracy. And it didn’t.
Michael Bloomberg only broke 17 percent of the vote in one U.S. state on Super Tuesday (Colorado, an all vote-by-mail affair where at least some of the vote came in before his epic collapse), and only finished as high as third place in states across the mainland. He can thank the 350 voters in American Samoa, 6,000 miles from our shores and still probably complaining about all the Bloomberg mailers and Web ads, for his lone victory. On Wednesday morning, Bloomberg suspended his campaign.
That was not a preordained result. There’s a perception (inaccurate though it may be) that elections go to the highest bidder, and Bloomberg’s bid was astronomical. He was trying something fundamentally new in political history, and for a while it was working.
Bloomberg entered the race late, deliberately skipping the early states where narratives can get set and momentum built. But the reward for that likely strategic mistake was having all the Super Tuesday states—the group that just voted—to himself, for months. As a Super Tuesday state resident, I ask you to trust me on this: you could not escape Bloomberg’s presence on air, online, and in your mailbox. He spent more to win the presidential election than any general election candidate in American history, and he reached that lofty perch nine months before Election Day. That doesn’t even include what he spent to buy political support, from candidates he previously showered with campaign contributions and mayors whose initiatives he funded through his philanthropy.
We saw Bloomberg’s poll numbers travel on a straight upward trajectory, eventually landing him in second place. And then the Democratic National Committee made a fateful decision; they eliminated the donor threshold for debates, which would allow Bloomberg to participate. This was bad news for Bloomberg, as I said within five minutes of that announcement. He was running a hermetically sealed race based solely on the image he projected constantly on TV. Now he would have to face questioners and his fellow candidates, for once on equal footing.
Even before this moment, progressive messaging on Bloomberg took hold. Yes, he was successfully labeled as the avatar of stop and frisk. But others, including the Prospect, expressed the great danger a plutocratic presidency would present. A Bloomberg coronation was likely to lead to austerity cuts, union busting, and authoritarian violence against protesters, as it did in New York City. But more than that, it would mean our elections could be bought, that our institutions had no use other than as a plaything for an egomaniac with money.
And then Bloomberg’s first debate, in Las Vegas, confirmed the smallness of this man, his lack of virtue. A silent billfold behind the podium would have done better. Yes, Elizabeth Warren did the heavy lifting on Bloomberg, particularly over the sexual misconduct cases at his company and the nondisclosure agreements he forced women to sign. But the stage was set in the week leading up to that debate, with a sustained argument from the left that handing Bloomberg the keys to the Democratic Party would represent the formal end of the Democratic Party in America. Bloomberg’s only response was a grumble.
A silent billfold behind the podium would have done better.
Voters paid attention. They shut out the endless commercials and mailers, and stood up to say they didn’t want their democracy purchased. Bloomberg’s share of the vote last night, given the winnowing of the field and the money he spent to acquire it, is pathetic. As of Wednesday morning, he managed to get about 1.7 million votes across the 14 states. Round that up with late absentee ballots and other counting, and we’ll charitably say 2 million votes. That’s about $250 per vote, better than junior billionaire Tom Steyer but a terrible return on investment.
Keep in mind that a significant (yet unknown) number of those votes were cast when Bloomberg was on the upswing. This could absolutely have gone differently if the curtain was never pulled back, if Bloomberg wasn’t revealed for who he is. That was a progressive messaging victory. Organized beliefs defeated organized money. It wasn’t even close.
Now, there are probably some situationally minded progressives who consider this a bad thing, who figure that a weakened Bloomberg led to a strong Biden, ready to pounce when the political establishment raised their crooked finger and said, “OK fine, him.” I don’t fully subscribe to this; voters have agency, and many simply chose Barack Obama’s vice president, someone whom trusted party elites and the polls told them could beat Donald Trump. They were comfortable enough with Biden’s policies, and critically, they didn’t get an up-close look at him. (Biden has performed worst this cycle in states that had the longest glimpse.) And now the race resets, one-on-one, in the states most likely to decide the election. Michigan votes next week.
But I seriously believe that drumming Michael Bloomberg out of politics saved democracy. Don’t let it be said that progressive messaging doesn’t work. It took on $500 million and won. And despite what anyone feels today, that was important. It will discourage other billionaires from looking in the mirror and seeing a president. It shows that voters have a limit, a breaking point, a line they refuse to cross. Regardless of what happens in the nominating race, we didn’t get the worst option in the choose-your-own-adventure book. And we have progressives to thank for the near-miss.
